Bruar's Rest

the joy of a good healthy day’s hawking was lost to Lucy’s ill-gotten love. Anna drifted off to her wagon, Lucy to hers, and Ruth to hers, while Megan tiptoed gently over to a snoozing Mother Foy. Not wanting to waken the old lady, she added more sticks to an almost extinguished fire. Sparks shot upwards, then fell back into the boiled kettle suspended from iron chitties. Steam hissed forth and caused her friend to stir. Slowly she sat upright, and adjusted a crumpled cushion behind her back. ‘Hello, girlie. Good day?’ she enquired, then added, ‘I have done a grand pot of my best vegetable soup; it’s over by the varda wheel cooling. Get washed up and we’ll eat. How was your day?’ she asked once more.
    ‘My day was just the best,’ she lied, and said all four of them had wandered the moor road, stopping at each village. ‘What nice folks live in these parts,’ she told her host, ‘they remind me of the Glen Coe people, but that was a long time ago. They gave to Mammy if they could, and sometimes gave what they couldn’t afford.’
    ‘Yes, they’re a damn worthy lot, I’ll agree with you. Now get your hands washed and we’ll eat.’
    Megan worried what problems Lucy’s affair would cause if discovered; where would the circle of gypsies go? Winter was not so far round the corner, and with autumn approaching by now they should be finding a winter ground. At least that was what happened in Scotland. She asked the old woman, who told her they were already on their wintering ground, and that she prayed nothing would happen to change things, because there was no other place for many a rough mile. This made matters worse. Megan felt she was betraying everyone by keeping the knowledge of Lucy’s coming elopement to herself. A word once given can’t be broken, though, but she still had next day to try to persuade Lucy to change her mind. If not, she would threaten to tell Mother Foy, who was held in great respect in the band. If anyone should know, then it had to be her.
    A cold breeze sent most folks indoors to spend the evening. Megan sat alone by the dying embers of the fire. In time a lonely Ruth joined her. For a while both sat, staring into the red glowing ashes. Ruth spoke first. ‘You wondering about me and the Bull?’
    ‘Mother Foy warned me about him, but it’s not my business what you do with your life. After all, who am I but a stranger?’
    ‘A stranger is someone who comes among us without a voice—I wouldn’t say you were like that. I don’t usually talk about my love life, but two years back when I knew nothing of men I foolishly gave my womanhood to Buckley. He’s a handsome brute. Made me laugh, he did. Head over heels as they say, that’s what I was, hook, line and sinker, his to do with as he pleased, and by God, that he did.’
    Aware that Ruth had begun to cry, she listened yet kept her eyes off her face. She knew enough about this girl to see that her sense of pride had long since suffered a blow. Should she interfere and ask why the name of Buckley was forced through clenched teeth? In whispered tones and as tactfully as she could, she asked what had happened.
    While old Mother Foy snored contented in her wagon bed and the dogs sniffed round the quarry floor, Ruth shared her pain.
    ‘Anna thinks I was angry because Bull brought a godger woman back after his fight with Gripper Smith, but what she didn’t know was that the night before the fight, he held two hands round my throat and warned he’d kill me. You see, I asked him to marry me. Oh, of course, the temper was in him, but I thought like a fool that if we shared a bed, then I could stop his mad dog fighting. I was worried his head was taking too many kickings. God, if you’d seen the look on his face, you’d have thought the Devil was in his soul. He screamed at me, ‘I’m the King of the Gypsies—no one has, or ever will, beat me!’ There was no stopping the anger in him. I thought my end had come. I don’t know to this day what stopped him from strangling me, honest, I felt the blood boil in my head. If it hadn’t been for his mate Hawen Collins calling his name, I’m positive you wouldn’t be speaking with me this night. And what makes it ten times worse, he broke Gripper Smith’s back that night, snapped him in two. Did it bother him that he’d taken a life? Was he remorseful? Not a bit! When she came back linking arms with him and covering his bruised face with red kisses, that godger